Final Fantasy XIII Part 3: Forsaken
by Imagination 5
Summary: In a world plunged into chaos, with the goddess and her knight lost to the mists of death and time, how will humanity proceed?
1. Prologue: Time Crash

His hands clutched at empty air. The girl who lay on his lap was dead. Dead...Dead. For the last human ever born, death should have been natural. It WAS natural. He had watched everyone he loved grow weak and die right before his eyes. All the people he was unable to protect, the old, the sickly, the weak, the infirm. He couldn't protect any of them.

So why? Why was he crying for this girl he had spent only days with? Why wouldn't the tears stop even now, as darkness enveloped and released them at regular intervals? Why couldn't he stop them? His tears gave way to anger even as the kept flowing, and he clenched his fists and pounded the reinforced husk of the airship as it descended.

Suddenly a gasp of shock behind him forced him to turn his head. Hope was holding Mog, but something was wrong. The moogle had said nothing for several seconds, but was still breathing, raspy, tired breaths as his bauble moved weakly from side to side with a light springing sound. But now his form was changing. Becoming incorporeal. His form was becoming something like liquid. Currents broiled inside a body that was slowly becoming translucent, and smoke was rising from the moogle's wings.

Noel staggered to his feet, head light, staggering as he clutched his head. "Mog?" he said weakly, reaching his hand out to touch the moogle's soft white torso.

But there was nothing there to touch. Only smoke billowed between his fingers as he sharply retracted grasp, swirling into the black sky and vanishing.

"What...what happened?" Noel asked numbly, as Hope slowly, uncertainly, brought his hands back to his sides.

Hope looked hesitant. He too was in tears, but unlike Noel, there was something else in his face. Something colder. Bitterness. Loathing. "Serah's purpose in the timeline is done." Hope clenched his fists and spat over the edge of the airship. "So Mog's is as well."

Noel gasped sharply, then looked away. Time had snatched away yet another reminder of the promise he'd made. The promise he was unable to keep. Yet...if time still had the ability to do that, then time wasn't completely dead yet. There was still something left. Something that had control. But what did that mean? Time had crashed to a shuddering halt. The blackened skies, the grey mist that hung over everything. It was a contradiction in its own right.

"What is that?" For the first time, Noel heard a crack in Hope's voice, and looked up.

The air was distorting. The building before his eyes was being pulled into this rapidly growing distortion, an orange glow emitting from the hole that had been cut into space. Ripples of an ethereal gold, blue and green shuddered through the wormhole, bordered by shards of silver-colored crystal.

But it wasn't the distortions that worried Noel. It was the...creatures emerging from them.

There were at least three of them. Each was six feet tall, the height of a tall man. Their bodies were unnatural, stretched like a grotesque painting; arms and legs splayed and stretched into boneless constructs of snow white flesh. Red scarves were tied around their necks in such a tight knot that they would make any human suffocate. But the true abomination was their faces; clocks. White faces encircled with Roman numerals. As the clock hands rapidly turned, they cut slices into their faces from which blood flowed freely, then healed immediately. They were monstrous. More so than even the Ci'eth.

They floated through the air, blank faces turning back and forth. And then as Noel and Hope watched, a nausea inducing change occurred; a single slash opening int he clock faces in unison, widening and distorting like the wormholes they had emerged from. When the anomaly was finished forming, a single, purple eye with a pitch black pupil had formed where their foreheads should have been.

The creatures of clockwork hesitated a moment, then tore through the air with fluid, graceful movements, soaring towards the airship.

"Listen!" Noel jumped and Hope started at Sazh's voice. "I'm going to try to find a place where I can do an emergency landing! You're going to have to hold these little pests off while I do! Think you can do that?"

Noel stood straight, withdrawing his blades as he glared at the abominations descending upon them. A silent affirmation. The desire to vent his fury upon something, anything, was too good an opportunity to pass up. To forget his own failures and throw himself headlong into battle.

Hope silently dusted himself off and joined Noel. "Like we have a choice," he said with a slight shake to his voice. Magic rippled through the air; the cold, lifeless air igniting with an explosion of heat that propelled itself towards the clock creatures. They tore straight through the airborne inferno, spinning as they left plumes of rapidly ascending smoke in their wake, getting lower and lower as the single eye on their faces widened, glowing an even more brilliant purple than they originally were.

"Watch out!" Noel yelled, but Hope had already hit the deck as three rays of violet light ripped the air above his head, singing his scalp. With a grunt of pain, Hope sent a blast of electricity rippling through the air, tiny blue sparks dancing around his hands as the cluster of electric energy struck one of the creatures head on, sending it tumbling soundlessly into the ruined maze of Academia, thousands of feet below, its rubber-like white chest torn open and spewing blue fire.

As Noel gripped his blades tightly, he realized why these creatures unnerved him so much. They were soundless. Even as they died in agony, they remained deathly silent. Emotionless, faceless things such as these. They didn't belong here. They didn't belong anywhere.

The creatures were getting braver now, Swooping in for direct attacks. Hope went down with a cry of pain as a clock hand materialized in front of a creature's arm, slicing into his neck. Noel couldn't tell whether he was dead or not, and as he slashed at and missed the third creature, he knew he didn't have time to check.

As he focused on the third monster, he didn't notice the second one actually landing upon the airship. For the third time, a distortion gathered, this time focused around the creature's legs. They were fusing, turning a sharp ebony black. The incredibly durable husk of the airship cracked and buckled under the shifting creature, and when the distortion cleared, Noel saw that the creature had turned its legs into a sharp, clock hand-like appendage, which it had buried into the airship.

With a growl of frustration, pain, and fury, Noel gathered energy in his right hand. White, with a swirling black energy within that bulged and twisted with immense power. It was cold to the touch, but he knew there was incredible destructive heat stored within. Bringing his hand back for momentum's sake, he hurled the energy at the planted clock being.

Yet as it approached the creature, a purple circle gathered beneath it. Circular in shape, with golden numbers forming at intervals, and a silver hand turning rapidly. Yet another clock symbol, this one etched into the airship's deck with dancing multicolored flame.

The energy ball stretched as it came into contact with the clock surface, which threw up a violet force field. The explosion was closer than Noel had expected, and he was thrown off his feet, his ears popping as a high pitched whining sound reverberated through his eardrums. As he landed on his arm with a cry of pain, Noel saw something that made his heart race, then sink in utter despair and helplessness.

He cried out and reached forward as Serah slid off the crippled airship, but was too slow. Much too slow. Her limp, lifeless form tumbled from the great airborne machine, arms and legs flailing uselessly as they were buffeted by currents of wind generated by both the high altitude and her own descent. As she vanished into the clouds, Noel was left uselessly holding his hands out to thin air.

"What in Pulse is going on out there?"

Sazh's voice shook Noel from his shock, and he jumped to attention. "Uh, uh, the-the monsters are planted in the airship." The third creature had buried itself into the airship while Noel was down, and had its own clock face etched into the airship, centering its unnatural form.

"Kid, did you just say they're _planted _into my airship?"

"Y-yeah," Noel shook from the cold of being out on the deck for so long, and the shock from all that had happened in the last hour alone. "I-I can't stop them. They're protecting themselves."

"And Hope?"

Noel scrambled on his hands and knees towards the fallen researcher. His throat was slashed, and blood bubbled up from the laceration. Noel couldn't tell whether the jugular had been cut; there was too much blood and he was too shaken up. But for now, he was breathing. Alive.

"He's down. There-there's a lot of blood," stammered Noel uselessly.

"Damn. Alright kid. I need you to grab Hope and get inside. There's nothing else you can do now, so getting you two inside is the best thing we can do."

Noel stammered out a numb affirmation, then hefted Hope over his shoulders. He expected some resistance from the clock creatures, but they didn't give any, remaining in their positions like twisted decorations cutting into the flesh of their only way out.

When they were inside, the sudden warmth of the airship like an oven, Hope was immediately taken away, hefted onto the shoulders of two men and a woman, who placed him on a stretcher and wheeled him away to places unknown, yelling out for emergency bandaging, suturing, pressure on the wound, drugs, and the like. Noel was only half paying attention has he walked robotically towards the cockpit, where Sazh piloted the airship.

"You did good out there kid." Sazh himself hadn't been crying. He seemed to have channeled all his grief into getting everyone on the ground safely. "Let me take care of the re-what?"

"What is it?" Noel snapped his head back towards the older man.

"One of my co pilots has lost control of their termina-another one just lost his as well! What's going on here?"

A sudden realization struck Noel like a heatwave. "Those things on deck...they're taking control of the airship!"

"How the hell is that possible?" hissed Sazh, gripping the wheel even tighter. "Alright kid. I'm going to need to perform an emergency landing in a lake near Academia! If we don't then those clock headed bastards up top'll make sure it's a crash landing! Sit down in a passenger seat and buckle up. It's gonna be a bumpy ride."

Noel numbly did as he was told as Sazh echoed his advice to Noel in an airship-wide announcement. There was a little panic, but everyone was prepared for something like this, which was more than he could say for himself. As the airship shook from the creatures above and in preparation for the landing below, Noel had only one wish. To survive.

He wasn't done yet.

He couldn't be done just yet.


	2. Ruined Earth

**Chapter One: Ruined Earth**

The landing had been rough, but not too dangerous. As far as Noel was aware, there hadn't been a single casualty among the crew and passengers, though he wasn't sure about the injured Hope. Emergency generator power kept the airship running, and the crash landing seemed to have jarred the creatures above into releasing control, although the circuits used for take off and control of the airship were completely fried.

"Everyone OK back there?" Sazh stretched as he checked on the group. After nodding, Noel unbuckled his seatbelt. "How's Hope?" he asked.

Sazh grimaced. "He's alright. He didn't nick the jugular, so he's resting in the sick bay now. Fang and Vanille are in the storage area, where it's safe. The workers down there tell me the crystals didn't budge during the landing."

Noel sighed in relief before he could stop himself. Good. They didn't need any more loss today.

"Hey. I know you're tired but I need you to help me check on those monsters on deck." Sazh reached into his belt and drew out a thick, sleek weapon, that fit perfectly in his palm. A second one was already slipped into his left hand. Two pistols. Seeing such futuristic weapons after the swords and bows he had become accustomed to was jarring.

"Alright," Noel replied simply, standing up with a groan. His entire body ached, new ripples of pain running through his body as he did so. He felt like he'd aged several decades in the last day alone. It was pretty tense in the airship. People were milling around, trying to get the control panels working. They at least seemed to have the heat working, because the airship remained comfortably warm. Not that he'd be able to experience that for much longer, going back out on deck.

Black clouds swirled over the sky, periodically letting loose lightning strikes. The lake they had landed in had turned black, like tar, bubbling and smoking ominously, no doubt infested with chaos. The ground was tinted with grey, cast by the chaos filled Bhunivelze above. Only the occasional piece of wildlife was visible on land. Had they been infected? Ripped from their home time? Killed? Noel didn't know.

The clockwork creatures were still there, planted in the airship's husk. The clock face they had burned into the airship was still there, but the flames themselves were out. Only charred black imprints with no trace of magic remained.

Sazh approached with his gun drawn, but didn't fire, probably because of the risk of the force field still being there. Instead he struck one of the implanted creatures with the barrel, and a grotesque cracking sound rang out, fissures running along its form like extensions of those already on the airship. Even as these ley lines ran along the monster, its form was blackening like charred paper, crumpling in on itself as splinters and fragments fell off its crumbling wind seemed to pick up as the beast disintegrated, and its fragments were carried away on the gusts.

"Were they suicide attackers?" asked Noel disbelievingly, walking over to the other one and prodding it with his shoe. The process that the other creature had undergone repeated itself, until only the clock face seared onto the airship left any reminder of its existence.

"I don't know. But I know if I ever see another one of those bastards, it'll be too soon," responded Sazh grimly. "Let's go inside. We need to plan out what we're doing from here."

Noel nodded, and followed the older man inside.

**vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv**

Darkness surrounded him. Not the simple darkness of night, with cold mist hanging in the air. None of the bright lights Academia offered to those who walked in the night, as he so often had while considering theories and their worth.

Pure, unbroken darkness. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want to be here. He didn't want to be here. His breath caught shallowly in his throat, and he choked and breathed in deeply as the taste of bile filled his mouth. He swallowed it, much as it repulsed him. He didn't have time to be sick. He needed to wake up. Escape this nightmare and get back to Noel and Sazh, Vanille and Fang.

"Hope."

He staggered back, the idea of something knowing his name in this darkness filling him with dread. But that voice, it was familiar. Where was it coming from? Thoughts of escaping from this nightmare gone, he wanted to run towards where he thought the voice was coming from. He put one foot in front of the other, taking a step, then another. Then another.

"Stop."

The voice was sharp. Laced with anger. Or was it concern? Regardless, it stopped him in his tracks. A wave of pain traveled up his chest and took hold of his throat. Emotion welled up inside him. Emotions he thought he had taken control of long ago. He felt like that fourteen year old child on Cocoon again before this voice.

"But...why?" His voice was barely a whisper; it had to be to stop this nascent emotion. "Why, Lightning? There has to be something I can do." He took another step forward, but before his foot hit the ground, pulled it back, looking away from the source of the voice as the sorrow became harder and harder to keep under control.

"Look at you. You've grown so much." The maternal voice he so rarely heard was in the voice, surrounding him from all sides. "But me...I haven't changed at all." Now the compassion gave way to bitterness, an emotion he was much more familiar with hearing from Lightning.

He opened his mouth to speak, but her voice cut him off. "Listen. I don't have much time. Keeping myself here...keeping Serah's will here within me. It's taking all my strength." Lightning's own voice had dropped to a whisper now, but this was from weakness, and not from emotion. "It's not over yet, Hope. It's not over."

"What do you mean?" Hope called out, but his voice came out as a croak, lost to the darkness. Yet she heard it anyway.

"Time has stopped, and chaos has flooded the world. But it still exists. It's still whole. Why is that?" Her voice was contemplative, and Hope knew that she knew the answer about as well as he did. "Etro...her death did not bring things to an end. She gave humans hearts. Pieces of herself. When she died, why didn't humanity die with her? Why were only parts of the world drawn into Valhalla? This is what you need to find out. And I don't know how."

At a loss for words, Hope tried to speak a few times, but nothing came out.

"I'm out of time, Hope. But you still have it. The world still has it. It's time for you to succeed where I have failed. To continue the work so many before you have lived and died to complete. This...is out of my hands now, and I don't know if I'll be able to help you again." Lightning's voice was growing fainter now, and the darkness was chipping away from his surroundings, light spilling into his world and surrounding him.

Did Lightning even know that Serah had died? That so much life had vanished from Pulse? "Wait, Lightning!" he called out uselessly, before the light enveloped him, his vision spinning and rotating like an overactive Nautilus ride.

**vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv**

"Director Estheim. Director Estheim!" A female voice was calling out to him, A loud voice, not very welcome in its screechy attempts at response. Hope groaned, hoping against hope that the voice would go away.

"Oh thank God!" Instead, the voice got even screechier. "I'm so glad the doctors were able to patch you up! I have the notes we've compiled on the monsters that attacked us here!" Out of the corner of his eye, Hope saw a stack of papers landing on a bedside table.

He was in the infirmary, a crisp white set of rooms that matched the sheets, duvets and pillows in their crisp whiteness. A clear white liquid was being transferred into Hope's arm through a drip. There was a little pain in his throat and head, but nothing like what he had endured in his days as a L'cie.

"Oh no you don't." A tall woman made her way over to them with a death glare on her face. Her brown hair was tied back in a tight bun that made her fringe look like it was about to rip itself from the scalp, and she was dressed in prim white clothes that blended her into the background with frightening thoroughness. "Director Estheim needs to rest. He doesn't have time to be reading your..." she sniffed derisively. "Nonsense."

"No, it's fine." Hope sat up with some effort, and grabbed the stack of notes on the bedside. The blond intern smiled with delight as the doctor pursed her lips in disapproval.

"Very well, but no sharp movements. You'll rip your neck open again." She turned her back on Hope and the intern. "When the pain gets worse, call for a doctor or nurse. We'll refill your Fercylatride drip."

Once satisfied that Hope had listened to her, the doctor took her leave, and the intern followed shortly after with a girly, nervous smile directed at Hope, who returned a subdued one. The notes weren't exactly impressive, but since nothing of these creatures had ever shown up before, he didn't expect them to be up to much.

Their odd physiology was there, as well as the two abilities they had displayed so far: heated lasers and the ability to manipulate electrical devices. Shapeshifting was listed under "possible abilities." Since the extent of their molding was unknown, it was natural that this data was put forward only tentatively.

His head began to throb, but not enough that he needed painkillers. Casting the notes back onto the desk in a splayed heap, he threw himself back down onto the bed, putting his right hand over his head as he stared up at the near blinding golden light illuminating his bed. He had so much to think about. Lightning, these monsters, the more imminent problem of a world full of chaos, with time frozen in place. Where would he begin? How should he proceed. The pain in his head only got worse the more he thought about it, so he decided he would sleep some more; try in vain to put his restless mind at ease.

"Alright you white coated bastards!" A smashing sound followed by screaming from the infirmary staff sounded, and Hope, suddenly alert, craned his head to look for the familiar voice.

A tall woman drove her long, symbol inscribed lance into another glass cabinet, tearing the medicine bottles that lay within open, and sending a waterfall of multicolored pills and liquids cascading onto the floor. Hope's eyes widened. Could it be her? After all this time?

"I'll give you one more chance to answer me!" she yelled out to no one in particular. "Where the _hell_ is Vanille?"


	3. Malfunction

**Chapter 2: A Revived Past.**

The black haired woman lay in a bed next to him, holding a rag that was soaking blood from a strike to her head. Her eyes were closed and her teeth were chewing her lip, her lips furrowed in an expression that could not get any darker. She looked like she was ready to kill someone.

"You look like you're ready to kill someone." Hope couldn't help but to try to start a conversation with her. They had barely talked back when they were bonded together as L'cie, branded outcasts, enemies of Cocoon. He had rarely talked to Sazh either, but he had always been closer to Vanille, Lightning, and later, Hope, than Fang.

"And you look older than you should." Fang was still somewhat woozy from the sedative. When the same nurse that objected to Hope reading or straining himself had come from behind and hit her with the solution, possessing the same strength as chocobo tranquilizer, she had hit her head on the way down, falling with a sound remarkably similar to a bird squawk.

"How many years has it been? Five, ten?" Her face softening somewhat, Fang looked at him, eyes boring in with the same intensity as ever. Five centuries had done nothing to quell the determination within them. He couldn't help but feel interrogated, and resisted the urge to squirm under the powerful gaze.

"Five hundred," he replied simply. "It's been five hundred years since Cocoon fell down."

Fang mouthed the words silently, in shock before her face readopted a neutral expression. "Well in that case, I take it back. You're lookin' good for 500."

Hope couldn't help but laugh, even though it made his slashed neck ache. Fang contented herself with a grin that turned up one side of her mouth and looked away, suddenly serious again. "But seriously, I need an explanation, kid. Or should I be like those other little suck ups and call you "Director"? Her mocking voice upon saying Director showed her obvious distaste for that idea.

"Kid's fine," replied Hope, and then sighed as he wondered to himself: Where should he start?

"I don't know everything?2 he said as a disclaimer of sorts. "The only person who does are Serah and Noel...and, well I suppose I should make sure you know this from the beginning. Serah...died, about an hour ago."

Fang gasped, then growled. "But after everything we went through to save her..." She clenched her fist; it was shaking with fury.

Fang went silent, and looked away. "I suppose I should tell you what happened while I was in the crystal...and after." She sighed to herself and looked up. "Vanille and I, we had moments. Moments when we could talk to one another in between our long sleeps. We always told each other our dreams. What we had thought about when we were awake without one another." She smiled wistfully. "It was peaceful."

Her smile. however, faded away as she continued speaking. "Before I woke up here, it'd been a long time since we'd last woken up. A long time." She toyed with her long, braided hair with two fingers. "I hadn't dreamed in a long time either. It was a long, dreamless sleep, and I'd wager it was the same for Vanille. Something felt off. I don't know how but I could tell. Even in that endless sleep."

"When I woke up here, I was alone." Fang looked away from Hope as she continued speaking. "Well, there were those people hanging around, but they ran away when I started breaking stuff." Fang showed her left hand, balled up in a fist, a glimmer of warrior's pride in her eyes. But even that faded as she looked back at Hope. "Where is Vanille?"

"I...don't know," Hope responded truthfully. "We extracted you both from the pillar. You were both fused. The two of you in the same crystal. I don't know how they could have taken Vanille without taking you as well. ...Unless."

"Unless?" Fang's gaze was almost a glare as she looked at Hope.

"Time's been messing up lately," Hope said, more to himself than to Fang. "It could have pulled Vanille out of the current time and placed her in another. Or another place. Or both."

"Wait just a damn minute!" Fang jumped out of the bed, swinging her arm furiously. "So Vanille could be anywhere? She could be sitting in a different time and place, scared, with nobody to help her?" She wiped her forehead with a hand, rubbing so hard that a nail nicked the skin and drew a thin flow of blood. "I can't just accept that. What can we do?"

"It might not be that bad." Hope didn't make to stop Fang from her outburst; it was futile. "I think she might still be somewhere we can find her. Time still seems to have some kind of rhyme and reason. It removed Mog from our time when Serah died, and it's still sending monsters through."

"That doesn't exactly sound stable," responded Fang sarcastically, as she sat down on the bed again, but she was listening.

"Time should have crashed." Hope was seeing this more and more clearly as he continued. "Everything should have stopped. Air should have stopped being pumped. People should have stopped aging, moving, breathing. We should have entered stasis, crystallized, died on the spot. And I know why we didn't. Fang, Etro died."

Fang's face scrunched up in concentration for a moment, then her eyes widened, face paling. "_In the ancient annals of Gran Pulse, Etro appears as the goddess of death and chaos. She is said to reside in the world where the souls of the dead find their rest..." _she recited. "Are you saying...?"

"We were lucky," Hope's voice grew bitter. "We should have died with the goddess, but even as she died, she created a contradiction. We survived because as time came apart, death did too, for a split second. Because Etro is such an integral part of death and the afterlife, we were overlooked by death as it rearranged itself. It was like a computer failure."

"Are you saying we're immortal?" Fang whispered, clenching her fist.

"No. It's not that simple." Hope shook his head grimly. "We can assume Etro's myths to be true. So we can assume that when we humans die, she greets us before Valhalla and gives us a tiny piece of chaos to hold within our hearts as we pass on. We don't know the function of that chaos, but it has some kind of connection to death and the afterlife for humans. With Etro no longer there to give it to us..."

"There's no telling what will happen to us after death," replied Fang, eyebrows furrowed. "Anyone who dies after the goddess...their souls aren't safe."


	4. A Meeting Ordained by Time

**Chapter 3: A Meeting Ordained by Time**

Darkness. Darkness everywhere. She couldn't even see her hands in front of her face, could only hear her unsteady footsteps, her ragged,panicked breathing. How was she supposed to move? Was she going to plummet to her death if she took a wrong step? Or would she simply not move and be stuck here forever? She lifted her hands up to what she assumed was her chest and took in a deep, terrified breath.

It took everything she had not to cry, everything it took not to curl up, wait to be saved. Wait for them. For anybody with a smile that she could rely on to protect her, to wrap her up and tell her it would be alright until she fulfilled her forced duty and went to sleep once again.

One step in front of the other. That was all she needed. She didn't rely on people anymore. She didn't drag people down with her anymore.

The flash of light blinded her, bursting into being above her head and spinning; a perfect sphere with tiny ridges making its light emission dance and shift like blades. It illuminated the ground at her feet, and yet before she could get used to it, it began to move forward without her.

Oh Gods. She didn't want to be left in the darkness again. Doing everything it took not to scream, she dashed forwards, following the light; staying in its glow as though leaving it would kill her. And for all she knew it just might.

Wait. Was that more light ahead? Oh Pulse she hoped so. She didn't want to have to stay in this tiny patch of light just to be able to see. As the new source of light got within stepping distance, she all but ran towards it, not minding that the light was almost completely blinding to look at at first. Not minding that for all she knew there could be nothing beyond there. She just wanted to be able to see again.

The cave was dim. Not pitch black, thankfully, but dim. Looking behind her, to see where she had come from, it seemed to only be a wall. A solid, unmoving stone wall, filled with jagged ridges. Stalagmites and stalactites grew around her, and a river flowed through the cave floor, a steady trickling reminding her that she was no longer in the soundless sightless darkness of a few moments ago.

Her name was Oerba Dia Vanille. And she would not die in the darkness.

Stepping forward, Vanille almost fell on the watery surface of the cave floor, planting her hands against the wall to stop herself. The spiked stone wall sent bursts of pain through her palms, but she had been through much worse. It wouldn't kill her.

Regaining her balance and dusting off her clothes, she looked around, trying to see what the safest path out of the cave was. However, her scouting was brought to a sudden halt as she caught sight of something . A person slumped over in the river, covered in cuts and bruises. The white longcoat, blond hair in an unfamiliar style. She recognized it all.

With a cry of concern, she ran towards her fallen friend.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

The blue glow around her hand faded as the last of Snow's wounds vanished. He had woken up halfway through the healing, and tried to speak, but she had silenced him with a wave of her free hand. Her heals were more thorough if she was allowed to focus during them.

Feeling exhaustion take her as the healing finished, she slumped to her knees, wiping the sweat off her brow. It had been a while since she had healed, and she was rusty. A while since she had used magic at all, in fact.

"What happened to you?" Snow asked wearily, obviously still groggy from the unconsciousness. "Last time I saw you, you were up in the crystal with Fang. I...I remember seeing you guys-" A huge yawn cut Snow off mid sentence, making Vanille giggle nervously.

"I don't know anything that happened," she sighed, shaking her head as Snow's yawn came to an end. "I just...woke up here. Without Fang. Have you...have you seen her?" she asked hopefully, but Snow's grim expression stopped that in its tracks. "What happened then?"

"Time's been acting up lately," Snow said. "I've been all over the timeline. Maybe we were meant to find each other." He clenched his fist, smiling with confidence only Snow could ever have pulled off. "If we travel together, we can find our way out of this cave. I just know it."

"Um...OK then." In truth, not having Fang nearby when she woke up was tearing at her inside, but Snow was a good man. He would take care of her until she could find her again. "But you need to tell me everything that's happened while I've been asleep!" she insisted, smiling widely.

"Alright, alright," Snow groaned. "Where the hell do I start...?" he wondered aloud.

''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

**Largely a chapter for the formation of a group. I apologize for the late update. I've been very busy lately. But I have more free time to write and update now, so expect more consistent new chapters.**


	5. Interstice

**Chapter 4: Interstice**

**'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''**

Time went by slowly in her petrified prison. Self inflicted, yes, and spent mostly in an unconscious state, but the moments when she woke up were the worst, brief as they were. Like being bound, blindfolded and gagged, like her lungs were suppressed and her heart was plugged up. Not that she needed any of those anymore, but it was still an unnerving experience to go through.

The _I'_one thing still intact was her hearing, and she had learned that she could project her voice out for small periods of time. She could sense, somehow, that one of those times was fast approaching.

"Why are you still alive?"

A husky male voice, all too familiar. Cold, yet choked with emotion at all times.

Had she had a working body, she would have smiled, but as it was had to make do with a simple retort. _The goddess supported me with an insurance measure. I would not not even be here in this state were it not for my decision. I could be free._

"Ah yes. Your sacrifice for your dear sister. All in vain. She lies cold and dead now, with no hope of salvation. You do nothing but prolong this world's suffering with your petty clinging."

_I know. _Lightning couldn't keep the shake out of her voice. _I know she's dead. But you...your victory will be short lived. I promise._"

"She who holds no further place in the world should not be making promises. Lightning, you have fought long and hard, and deserve a reprise from your pointless struggle. Yet I cannot kill you." Frustration entered Caius's voice for the first time. "Why do you not release your hold? Does the suffering not move you at all?"

_Don't try to get me to pity you. This is all your fault to begin with._

"Perhaps. But you insist on keeping this world going. A world without a goddess, doomed to fall to the chaos at any moment. Why do you not release yourself? Extricate your soul from this world and move onto the next?"

_Because...I still have...something to do._ Her projection was growing weak. She didn't have much time left to speak. _I'm still...a knight...a knight..._

"Pathetic. You hold the dreams of a dead goddess within your prison. Dreams that shall never be fulfilled." Lightning could hear the scorn in his voice, and it frustrated her. But emotions, especially ones such as that, were no longer of any use to her.

_I...wasn't..._ And then the link between she and the outside world was broken. She could slowly feel herself drifting back into slumber. Perhaps it was best she wasn't allowed to continue speaking. And as she lost her last remnants of consciousness, a power nearby almost made her gasp. It was so strong she could almost feel the heat, even in her current state. It was at Caius's heel...but what did that mean? It was impossible. That was supposed to have passed long ago.

_Ragnarok?_

_'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''_

**Again, largely exposition. More lengthy chapters will follow.**


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